Dr. Bonnie Featured in NY Post on Petraeus Affair: Cure, Don't Fire Adulterers And This Marriage Can Be Saved

Adultery expert and relationship therapist Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil talks to the New York Post (http://bit.ly/Ti9aoz) about the fall-out from the Petraeus affair. She believes infidelity is treatable, curable, and forgivable and that adulterers should not be stigmatized.

(PRWEB) November 22, 2012

Adultery expert Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil tells the New York Post that adulterers should not be fired and stigmatized for their behavior (http://bit.ly/Ti9aoz). She believes adultery is an addiction and should be treated like a disease similar to alcoholism or drug abuse. She says it's important to understand the pressures on people like General Petraeus who deal with high stress, high power environments. The underlying issue stems from high-stress jobs where people feel so powerful and are likely to take more risks, thus leading to more feelings of power and a need to perpetuate thrill-seeking behavior in order to maintain the high they get.

Dr. Bonnie explains that those with high-stress, high-risk jobs need to be checked for burnout regularly, and they need more time off - similar to the rules around when pilots can and can't fly. She says they need someone to help them realize they're ripe for an affair, and how to deal with the challenges they face because of their jobs. Until that happens, she says, people with high-stress jobs will continue to have these problems. "People with such demanding jobs need to be able to re-coup and re-group from the thrill-seeking that comes with a high-stress career. Otherwise, they're going to try to alleviate the stress themselves by self-medicating. They need to be taught how to channel their need for power into healthy ways as opposed to ways that are dysfunctional." The outcome of this is seen in this recent scandal.

What's being manifest is what Dr. Bonnie calls the biochemical craving for connection, which needs to be treated like similar diseases of alcoholism or gambling. Dr. Bonnie believes infidelity is curable and does in-service training for groups like the military to help them understand it's not about ethics - but rather about treating and curing the disease and addiction. She works with a doctor to help those in susceptible to adultery deal with life's pressures through supplements, medication, diet, and exercise. Through these methods, she has a high success rate of marriages that are saved following an affair.

People with stressful jobs are looking for a release from this constant pressure. An affair or illicit sex provides the biochemical connection they're craving, along with that high and thrill of risky behavior. But keeping up the charade only causes more pressure. And so the cycle perpetuates itself.

This biochemical craving has to do with stress, loss and separation. She says people in high-stress jobs need to take time off, to stress-bust in a healthy way. Anytime someone is put in such a high-stress environment day in and day out, they will burn out and look for thrill seeking behavior to negatively stress bust and self medicate." Dr. Bonnie explains that it's time we do something in our society to start treating this behavior as the disease it is.

Most adulterers are burnt out and stressed out but nothing changes unless the root of the problem is changed. To this end, Dr. Bonne says firing is not the answer - people facing this situations need to be rehabilitated, and taught how to balance their brain chemicals, how to balance work and play, how to manage stress. That is the pattern that needs to change.